KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - A federal judge in Washington ruled Tuesday that an environmental impact statement must be completed before construction of a southwest Kansas power plant can begin.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Emmett Sullivan requires the Rural Utilities Service, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to complete the environmental study before granting any approvals to Sunflower Electric Power Corp. for the proposed $2.8 billion, 875-megawatt coal-fired power plant near Holcomb.
The decision is likely to delay construction of the plant, which has been the subject of a fierce partisan political fight in Kansas for years.
Sunflower spokeswoman Cindy Hertel said the utility's officials don't know yet how the ruling will affect its project outside Holcomb.
"We haven't had a chance to look at it, to fully digest it," she told The Associated Press.
In March, Sullivan declared that RUS violated federal environmental law by failing to prepare an EIS before approving Sunflower's proposal to build two 700-megawatt plants near the company's current coal-fired plant in Finney County.
Tuesday's ruling was aimed at coming up with a remedy for the violations he declared last year.
"The people of Kansas and downwind states will now get their legitimate public health concerns heard," said Jan Hasselman of Earthjustice, who led the lawsuit on behalf of the Sierra Club. "Once the facts of this dirty and dangerous project are exposed to the public, we think that the federal government will have to just say no."
Sullivan's ruling was part of a lawsuit against RUS and Sunflower filed by the Sierra Club in October 2007. That's the same month that the Kansas Department of Health and Environment rejected an air quality permit, citing the plant's potential emissions of greenhouse gases linked by scientists to global warming.
Then-Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius backed the decision, and her dispute with the utility spilled over into the Republican-controlled Legislature. Lawmakers blocked legislation promoting renewable energy and tried unsuccessfully to override the permit denial.
Almost immediately after Sebelius stepped down as governor in April 2009 to become U.S. health and human services secretary, her successor, Democrat Mark Parkinson, brokered a deal with Sunflower to allow one coal-fired plant. His effort cleared the way for passage of "green" legislation he favored.
Parkinson left office in January, but Republican Gov. Sam Brownback is a strong supporter of the utility's plans.
Sullivan noted in his ruling that RUS - which must sign off on decisions related to the Sunflower project because of its past financial support and assistance in reorganizing the company - believes Sunflower should have sought its approval for the one-plant plan because it was so much different than what had been approved in 2007.
Senate President Steve Morris, a Hugoton Republican, said the need for the power plant hasn't changed, and the demand for jobs and more electricity continues to grow.
"I don't understand how another environmental impact statement could be different," Morris said. "I live in that part of the world. I know what the environment is like and the only thing that has changed is that we have been going through a severe drought."
Morris said he had spoken recently with Sunflower officials who said they were committed to building the plant, which would have a $4 billion impact on the southwest Kansas economy during its construction phase.
"I have confidence they will move forward. It will be a major source of power," he said. "Evidently the Sierra Club has convinced a federal judge that if they keep delaying it everyone will throw up their hands and it won't get built."
Sunflower supplies power for about 400,000 Kansans and wants to build a plant with enough capacity to meet the peak demands of 448,000 households, according to one state estimate. Three-quarters of the new capacity, or 695 megawatts, would be reserved for a Sunflower partner, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association Inc., of Westminster, Colo.
That's a sore point for many critics of Sunflower's plan, but the utility's supporters say exporting electricity is as beneficial as exporting beef, wheat and other agricultural commodities.
Opponents say whatever economic development benefits come with construction of a new plant are offset by potential environmental harm, including increased pollutants in the air and potential mercury contamination.
"The financial and public health risks involved in the development of this project have always made it a bad deal for those of us who will have to breathe dirty air and pay unnecessary costs for this coal plant," said Garden City resident Lee Messenger, who opposes the new plant.
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John Hanna and John Milburn in Topeka, Kan., also contributed to this report.